Mark Mazzetti

David, Mark, welcome to the show.

So in my lifetime, there have been many false alarms about a full-fledged U.S.

war with Iran, where it seemed like we were close, but obviously it did not happen.

This is a full-blown war by the United States and Israel against Iran.

Last summer when the Israelis began a conflict, there were clear lines that they didn't want to cross.

They didn't want to kill the supreme leader or topple the regime.

And the ambitions in this conflict are extraordinary.

President Trump said he is trying to basically knock off the leadership of the country and let the country of Iran figure out what goes on from there.

This has never happened before.

OK, so clearly we are at an unprecedented moment.

Talk about how we ended up here.

And not only that, there's another important element here, and that's after last summer's conflict with Iran,

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, starts making the case that there needs to be another round of strikes, that last summer's war didn't finish the job.

So last December, he goes to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President Trump.

And during that meeting, we believe that Netanyahu basically asks Trump's permission for Israel to strike Israel.

sometime in 2026, particularly ballistic missile sites, because this is of urgent concern to Israel.

Iran's missile program, as we've seen, is quite capable of hitting Israel.

And so even as Trump is talking about the protesters,

Netanyahu is also making his own case for a joint U.S.-Israeli conflict to be far more ambitious than what happened last year.

And the question, of course, is all of these diplomatic talks are happening is if they fail, we're building up this huge military presence in the Middle East around Iran.